I just published the GTBank Chrome app i made earlier to the Chrome Web Store. (I should have done that earlier but I've been quite busy). So you can access your internet banking account with just one click.

]]>Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:15:40 +0100These days, we've witnessed more and more conversations
dying on twitter. The problem is largely due to the constraints associated with
having to express propositions in 140 characters.It's downright difficult and
most people would rather use their time in better ways than contriving the best
way to use supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in a tweet, kapich?

However we've come up with an awesome way to keep the
conversation going, Ladies and Gentlemen introducing (*drum rolls*) Digital Drift -
a new podcast series that covers everything tech with special focus on Nigeria.

Digital Drift is an informal, relaxing and yet engaging way
to discuss the local tech scene, demystify new technological trends and
hopefully get you up, close and personal with many tech role models from all
over the world. Putting this in the cloud will make it accessible from anywhere in your car, while going for a run, or from your podcast library on iTunes or Gbedu.FM (why not?).

Permanence and find-ability are important for ideas to spread and grow. Twitter is a fragile and fleeting place. Give your ideas and thoughts the permanent home they deserve.

]]>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:28:01 +0100I don’t really know why I’m doing this but I’m doing it anyway. Not sure
how far I’ll go but the aim is to redesign the windows 8 (Start menu)
Interface and experience with html5 & css. I’m a fan of the simple design, the subtle transitions and the use of tiles instead of icons.

So Far..

I’ve designed the interface in Photoshop, including the icons. All
that’s left is moving to my text editor to start coding. I’m doing this
in my spare time so I’m a bit slow but I’m enjoying the progress. → Full Image

Namzo is the code name for super hero designer Ernest Ojeh- He is a front-end designer with Digital Craft Studios and has his personal blog at http://namzo.tumblr.com/

]]>Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:02:48 +0100I’ve helped organize two local hackathon weekends this year, Garage48
Lagos in
May and Startup Weekend Lagos in September. While Garage48 Lagos is
described by many as the first real hack event to happen on
the local scene, Startup Weekend Lagos did not fall short in quality. Quality? What’s that? It’s the right mix. A hackathon like Garage48 and
Startup Weekend or any such future event has to have just that. So what
makes this right mix? Let me explain.

1Identity: There are many synonyms for the term ‘events’ e.g. conference,
un-conference, hackathon, owambe, shows, etc. unfortunately using
these synonyms inter-changeably in this context is a recipe for disaster.
It is important therefore that local organizers comprehend an event’s identity
in order to help them set priorities and develop the appropriate content
for the event.

No, We do not need a DJ and a dance floor for a hackathon

2 Participants: The
organizers have to communicate the event’s identity clearly so as to ensure
that the right participants register for the event.

A hackathon, like @Garage48 and @SWLagos, is an event where you team
up to turn ideas into real tech products over the weekend.

However getting quality participants can be a tough nut to crack— How
do you convince someone to bust his weekend for work and as if
that wasn’t bad enough, it’s work without pay. Hackathons are
fun (working-fun or fun-working), especially if the participants gets to
meet other great developers that they admire. A nice way to sell this is
to put up a list of attendees early enough.

Also there is the possibility, it could just happen, that the idea you
get to work on turns out to be the next big thing everyone’s been looking
for- then the pay will come.

3Sponsors and Investors: Hackathons need sponsors to cover the cost,
i.e. good food, space, etc. But what kind of sponsor fits the hackathon
mix? It shouldn’t just be about publicity for the sponsors, what would
be ideal is that they take a lively interest in the ideas and products
as possible investors. Investors could be separate and more specialized,
no doubt, but I like sponsors getting more opportunity than just publicity.

4Business development and support: There is clearly the need for young Nigerian
tech entrepreneurs to do something quickly about their lack of business
intelligence (see: Why Nigerian StartUps struggle). And many times one finds a tech startup without a business
developer in the team. So I wasn’t surprised that many developers at
hackathons focused on technology and overlooked the crucial role that
business people play in a team, especially at that early stage.

This is a problem that hackathons need to address by adding more business
edge into the weekend mix, and making active plans for providing business
support to the teams that want to continue building their product after
the event. The question usually by techies is: what’s a business person
to do at the weekend?

Subomi Plumptre from
the winning team at Startup Weekend Lagos knew exactly what to do. One thing that was obvious
was that she had played her role actively from the outset. Find Jimoh’s presentation was top notch, apart from their prototype demo, it had cash-flow
spreadsheet, graphs, profit calculations, and demography data etc. all
analysed and put together over a weekend. As I sat down watching that presentation,
I was sold and perhaps for the first time, I understood an oft-repeated
phrase- something about sellingice to an Eskimo.

]]>Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:52:52 +0100OVIA - the asynchronous video platform- has been generating a lot of buzz and recently they made it into the 500 startups programme in the US however unknown to most Nigerians, Imo Udom is one of the co-founders of the successful startup.

Lately, Imo has been thinking about the Nigerian startup scene and he sees Startup weekend Lagos as the missing link. Startup Weekend brings the best of both worlds- technology and the investors. A number of high profile VCs and Angel Investors from the US and Europe have confirmed their participation at the event.

Imo shares his experience building OVIA and he talks about how
Startup Weekend Lagos will change the Nigerian startup scene for the
long term.

]]>Tue, 12 Jul 2011 04:11:45 +0100I came across this piece by Dan Mall on Method & Craft some weeks ago and immediately I connected with it. It's something that most digital agencies, designers and developers can relate with. At least, now, we have a term for the work we do on projects that the client cannot sign-off but helps our process, now and in future projects: Invisible Deliverables

I’d wager that most of us—especially the ones that work in client services—spend a majority of our time on deliverables. And rightly so; without deliverables, it would be difficult to get approvals and move forward on a project. We work for days or weeks in Photoshop to produce JPGs to send to a client. Or we craft finely tuned HTML, CSS, JavaScript to prototype a particular interaction so the client can see it in action

Yet, I rarely see time spent on things that are never intended to be
shown to a client. The purpose of these is to help facilitate internal
process; nothing more....read the full post »

]]>Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:19:34 +0100Yesterday Microsoft announced what would be the new evolution of their windows OS and as expected the guys from Redmond are sticking to their vision of unifying the windows experience across all platforms- desktop, mobile and tablets. This is very much in-sync with what the turtle-necks in Cupertino have been working towards with the Apple iOS.

While much of the early buzz around yesterday's announcement was focused on the new touch-capabilities of windows8 and what this would mean for hardware and software developers, what I find more thrilling is the fact that the new OS will allow apps built with HTML5 and Javascript take advantage of all the capabilities of the PC

Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.

Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.

On the mobile landscape products like Appcelerator's Titanium (also does desktop), and PhoneGap have made it possible for develpers to build native iPhone and Android apps using HTML and Javascript- however in many of this cases as Apple will like to remind us- apps developed this way have instead of using traditional Objective-C or Java (in the case of Android) suffer performance issues, however slight.

But what makes the windows8 approach is that right from the conception Microsoft has built in this capability and thus developers will expect it to work seamlessly, or at least better that a third-party product that tries to convert Web code into native code.

As a developer planning to use Titanium aggressively over the next couple of years for mobile and desktop development this is sure that this is the future, HTML5 and Javascript is the new native. What do you think?

]]>Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:17:40 +0100At this year's Barcamp
Lagos event, quite a number of issues were raised decrying the lack
of engagement offered by Nigerian websites. Almost all of those problems
traced their roots to a lack of focus on content by the websites in question.
How is this?

A growing trend today, is the massive adoption of open
source Content Management Systems (CMS) by Nigerian organisations as the key to solving their website
problems hence the rise of solutions such as Joomla,
Drupal, Wordpress, etc. As at last count there were 134 documented CMS
/ Portals and many more in the wild.

Don't get me wrong content management systems are not a bad thing,
but an off-the-shelf CMS that is not tailor-made for your content, may
quickly become your straitjacket and put your precious content in jeopardy.
Most companies end up spending precious energies and revenue on their CMS
rather than focusing on their content. In the long run, frustration sets
in and the content gets subsumed beneath the CMS.

Trying to fix an organization's content problems by installing
a content management system (CMS) is like trying to save a marriage by
booking a holiday. We know that a successful web project needs a content
strategy… Strategic
Content Management

The valid approach for a new website project or a re-design is firstly,
to understand the business goals of the organization and what the user
experience of the end-users should be. With these at the back of the mind,
the in-house editor (or an external content strategy expert) identifies
and analyses the organization's content and defines how it should
be organized and at the same time, trying to establish a relationship between
seemingly disparate content in order to make it more relevant to the project's
goals. This relationship should lead to a sustainable content model for
the project- the content strategy.

Content is substance. No matter the platform, publication, or format,
content refers to everything that conveys meaning: “Content includes the text, graphics, video, and audio that make up an
interactive experience.”—Kristina Halvorson http://knol.google.com/k/content-strategy

Based on the content model, a content management system is then
developed or customized to help deliver the user engagement sought and
at the same time achieving the organisation's goals.

A CMS, unlike some IT departments may lead you to think, is not a bunch
of features. A good CMS should work for content by enabling the content
model and thus provide the experience. This is why in many cases, it's
almost impossible to get a CMS that works off the shelf for your project.
In most cases you'll require customisation, sometimes dauntingly
extensive customisation.

For a CMS to help achieve the organization's objective it needs to
have a light foot-print in other words-it needs to work for content, that's
why WebCrafter is
built and deployed according to the content model of the organization.
Another good example is Perch by Edge
of my seat.

Content is King

But the problem of content strategy is not only restricted to the web,
Nigerian politics and music is also taking a hit from this.

Take as example the recently conducted Nigerian Presidential Debates
for the 2011 elections. Almost all the live
discussions online surrounding the debate focused on every other
thing except what the candidates actually proposed in their rhetoric.
Why bother have debates at all, if it's not to stoke the conversations
that analyse the content to help the SELECT and VOTE process for #RSVP as #NigeriaDecides.
Or were the debates another attempt at content management without focusing
on the content? Bankole Oluwafemi gives more perspective on this with A
Tale of Leaking Umbrellas And Knee-Jerk PDP Hatred.

JayZ aired his view on the abuse of Auto-Tune (akin
to off-the-shelf CMS) in the music industry: DOA (Death of Auto-Tune) from
the Blueprint
3 LP album.

The web with its interactive and pervasive nature is a good starting point
to influence a content focused attitude in the other industries. What do
you think?

]]>Sun, 10 Apr 2011 22:10:00 +0100It's not rocket science and everyone, no matter your profession, comes to this realization: everything is design and by design. Some realize this sooner and try, others are too lazy to apply its demanding principles but one thing's for sure- you cannot ignore design.

You are design, the world around you is design- it's that simple. Okay, perhaps it's not that simple as that. Otherwise why would people, go to the university try and earn a 'design degree'. Maybe the problem with design this is that it's so fundamental and as such we can take it for granted. Hard wired unobtrusively into everything, design becomes the very thing, what you call the experience. More like the taste and the after-taste.

This site is dedicated to the lost art of "seeing" the world around you, using it as inspiration, and freeing yourself from the chains of your chosen medium and craft. Life is too short to not see. Life is too short to not to be aware. - www.johnmamus.com/designeverything/

In the past five years I've worked at Digital Craft Studios, I've come across programmers who unfortunately don't see the connection between design-user experience-and code. Unfortunately, they end up building software based on bad design that's a pain in the neck to use.

In order to build better products, web and mobile development companies have to embrace good design principles that put user experience at the centre of their development process. For this, we can learn a lot from the construction industry. A new building actually starts from the architect's (designer) desk, after which the structural engineers (developers) test the design against industry standards (web standards) to see if the design can hold (content) according to the type of use (user interaction and experience) that it would be put to. An excerpt from John Sculley's interview On Steve Jobs puts this product development approach in context:

Sculley. I don't take any credit for it. What Steve's brilliance is, is his ability to see something and then understand it and then figure out how to put into the context of his design methodology — everything is design. An anecdotal story, a friend of mine was at meetings at Apple and Microsoft on the same day and this was in the last year, so this was recently. He went into the Apple meeting (he's a vendor for Apple) and when he went into the meeting at Apple as soon as the designers walked in the room, everyone stopped talking because the designers are the most respected people in the organization. Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him. It is only at Apple where design reports directly to the CEO. Later in the day he was at Microsoft. When he went into the Microsoft meeting, everybody was talking and then the meeting starts and no designers ever walk into the room. All the technical people are sitting there trying to add their ideas of what ought to be in the design. That's a recipe for disaster.

Another thing we can learn from the order inherent in the world around us, it the fact that design is not arbitrary. Design is for a purpose and as such it must meet certain criteria that will enable it reach its goal. The most comprehensive summary of the principles of design you'll ever find, one that continues to inspire the design of Apple products, is the Ten Principles for Good Design by Dieter Rams:

Good design is innovative.

Good design makes a product useful.

Good design is aesthetic.

Good design makes a product understandable.

Good design is unobtrusive.

Good design is honest.

Good design is long-lasting.

Good design is thorough down to the last detail.

Good design is environmentally friendly.

Good design is as little design as possible.

How does your product development process compare?

]]>Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:49:32 +0100Social networks are growing at an uncontrollable rate, connecting individuals through a vast network of friends or the social graph as Mack Zuckerberg coined it. The most recent statistics for facebook and twitter put their active user base at over 600 and 150 million users respectively. There's no doubt about this one, social networks have become ubiquitous, an amenity.

something subtle happens to a technology when it achieves amenity: It disappears. It becomes part of the user's world, and the user is absorbed into its world, easily, and seamlessly. - John Seely Brown

As one would expect companies want a piece of the action too. Never before in mankind's history, has there been such a powerful tool for maximum exposure and interaction which therefore presents an immeasurable opportunity for creating a positive brand image or to advertise a product. The great strategy for most companies at this time is to turn this maximum exposure into maximum profit. Unfortunately many are realizing too late that as with any other uncharted region there be dragons, and they bite.

The major tipping point here is an understanding that the underlying principle of successful social media engagement is trust. In other words, when a user on a social network wants to make a decision to buy a product, (s)he typically will check to see if any of his trusted friends on the network can recommended the product.

Orkut is an on-line community that connects people through a network of trusted friends Find the people you need through the people you trust→ LinkedIn.

If I am uncertain I will take a cue from others. If other people are doing something, it must be ok for me to do it too. If other people are refraining from doing something, then it is probably not a good idea for me to do it.

Thus one criterion which we use in determining what is correct is to find out what our friends think is correct. But what happens when our friends are not acquainted with the brand or product in question?

Examples of social proof, originating from outside our personal friendship circles, abound on the internet. In the form of testimonials and reviews, to starred ratings of products or even the number of feed subscribers for a particular blog; all these serve as a yard stick for the unacquainted to measure the desirability of the particular product or brand.

With social networking today the analogy is the same, the number of facebook 'likes' that a brand has or the number of twitter 'followers' serves for its social proof. It's that simple, right? Wrong.

Even as brands are looking to reach more people and flaunt publicly their large following on social networks, they have to be wary of thinking that numbers equals social proof. This may be the case perhaps for the undiscerning user but if you're selling a product or pushing your brand, you must also consider the quality of your followers. There's a saying that goes:

Birds of a feather flock together

The quality of your followers' measure how reliable their recommendations will be, and to a large extent how reliable your brand or product is. It's as simple as the company you would not want to keep in the physical world, perhaps because of their political viewpoints, cultural biases, etc; you should not keep on your social network. To restate the importance of quality of friends and followers, it pays to remember that trust is an intricate part of what social networks is all about. Ordinarily an individual's social graph typically has not more than 100 per persons, for a company this will be several multiples depending on factors such as staff strength, popularity or fame and reach of brand, etc.

For the most part, you'll probably not have serial killers trying to be-'friend' or follow you on your social network, it doesn't however hurt, as part of your social strategy, to look in once in a while and make sure that you do not have a connection that could be detrimental to your brand image.

]]>Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:39:57 +0100Predictions for what to expect in technology this year are ripe with the usual suspects-Apple, Google, Facebook and some making their star debut-TomTom.
Apart from 2011 being the year for tablets, we also expect to see major partnerships such as facebook and skype coalition, or the rumoured acquisition of TomTom by Apple. Ben Wood, Director of Research at CSS Insight made these predictions in the January issue of Mobile Europe magazine.
But this is as far as predictions can go, sit back and enjoy the act.

1 Apple to buy TomTom. The move will be motivated by a desire to own the mapping assets of Tele Atlas and reduce Apple's dependence on Google for map services. A by-product of the acquisition will be securing significant intellectual property rights to turn-by-turn navigation and personal navigation devices, as Apple continues to fight court battles over patent claims. TomTom assets will enable richer location-based services on Apple devices and on its MobileMe service. A variety of mapping and location APIs are released to the Apple development community, fuelling more innovative applications.

2Nintendo to launch 'DS Mobile, a connected portable gaming device, by 2012. Like Amazon, Nintendo will make a wholesale air time agreement with a global provider such as AT&T. Users will also be able to activate cellular connectivity retrospectively and swap games using WiF i. Cellular connectivity will also be used for access to cloud-based community services such as review charts and high-score tables.

3 3D becomes a major theme on mobile devices in 2011 but mobile 3D displays flatter to deceive. High-end phones and tablets will be able to record and play back 3D content, but the capability proves little more than a gimmick. Early 3D screens that do not need special glasses start to emerge beyond Japan, but consumers are disappointed by the results.

4 In 2012 Apple will unveil the "iScreen", a connected screen for the home to replace traditional TVs and offers the following capabilities: TV, PC, games console and a life stream" of cloud- based services such as photos, videos and social networking. Apple devices will double as accessories such as games controllers by exploiting the accelerometer, gyroscope and other sensors. Apple will extend its established iTunes service model to the iScreen.

5 Sales of tablets beyond Apple's iPad will fail to meet over-optimistic expectations. All leading mobile device manufacturers will produce tablets, leading to overstocking by distribution channels and inventory problems. A period of discounting will see margins slip to zero to clear channel excesses. Low-cost Android tablets will irrevocably damage consumer perceptions and dent the market's potential.

6Facebook buys Skype and launches a calling service within its mobile applications. The acquisition of Skype would provide Facebook with a huge group of users that complements its own. Functionality will be quickly added to enable a small telephone symbol next to Facebook contacts that are online. Initially the service will be restricted to Wi-Fl connections, but the potential for expansion will be clear. Operators will be powerless to stop this trend and they will see their revenue from roaming calls dip further.

7 Concern grows over addiction to mobile devices, particularly among the under-25s. So-called 'screenagers' enter the workplace suffering from attention deficit disorder and unable to fulfil basic requirements such as simple face-to-face social interactions. Phone makers, network operators and Web service providers face a barrage of negative publicity.

8 Huge growth in video-based services driven by an audience that prefers to watch clips rather than read text on a mobile screen will have catastrophic effects on mobile networks. Operators will have to take drastic action and adjust tariffs to temper this behaviour. They will also rely more on subscription services that attract a premium for content, such as live sport. This will provoke fierce debate about operators obligation to take a neutral approach to content delivery.

9 Operators will focus on speed and quality of service rather than number of gigabytes when marketing mobile data. They will introduce tariffs that offer tiered service levels tied to an allocated volume of data. Ironically, although this will change the way services are sold, data volume will remain important as improved bandwidth and quality of service could result in greater demand.

10 Operators will pay subsidies based on the data efficiency of a software platform, favouring BlackBerry over iOS and Android. We predict that in 2011 operators will begin to differentiate their tariffs and device subsidies to prompt users to consider less data-hungry devices and operating systems. The more strain a device places on the network, the less subsidy it will attract.

12 'Dual-core' will be the new 'gigahertz'. Having previously marketed mobile phones based on the number of megapixels and gigabytes of storage, manufacturers will keep the focus on processors, but shift from speed to multi-core computing. We expect to see devices advertised as "twice the speed" and "the most powerful smartphone" owing to a dual-core processor, even though such claims do not reflect true performance.

]]>Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:40:23 +0100 During our initial meetings on any new project at Digital Craft Studios we usually show our clients an interactive album of screen-shots from our favourite websites, and if the client had completed the project review form earlier, they would have also come across this pertinent question:

List a few sites that you find compelling and why?

At first glance the question might strike the un-informed as our way of sampling their design taste or their expectations but the real reason runs deeper than that and has its roots in the very science of knowledge and the creative thought process. An aspect of which philosophers have come to call conversio ad phatasmata or 'conversion to sense experience'.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas,

…human beings can acquire concepts only by abstracting forms from sense appearances, Aquinas can be called an empiricist. He insisted that without some sensory input on which the mind's abstractive power could get to work, no concepts would ever be constructed, nor would any rational activity ever take place: there are no 'innate ideas'. Moreover, any actual use of concepts in thinking or willing must—at least in this life, in which the soul is embodied—be constantly referred to sense contents, either of perception or memory or imagination. This necessary human orientation to sensory data is what Aquinas called 'conversion to sense experience' (conversio ad phantasmata)… Cf: http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/739/St-Thomas-Aquinas.html

In lay terms, we identify things through a process of matching the concepts we have in our minds (a result of abstraction from previous sense experience) and the present object before our eyes (senses). Thus we say that an artist [designer, developer, etc] is good or has copied, if he/she were to reproduce these original mental concepts, verbatim, in an artwork [website, web/mobile application, graphic design, etc ]. When Pablo Picasso made his famous statement:

Good artists copy Great Artists steal

He acknowledged that to be a great artist one had to strive to make products that go beyond merely the identity or the conversio ad phantasmata. So what does it take to be great?

As humans our imagination can give birth to new concepts at a second or higher level of abstraction. At those stages the resulting concepts are not bound by the physical laws which limit the original concepts because of their basis in sense experience. It is at the second level and above that the artist can 'create' new concepts different/distinct from the original concepts. You find examples of these objects of the imagination in folk lore such as fairies, dragons, fawns, etc or even in technology products that provide you with their fresh sense of originality, such as the iPhone. This is the result of the creative process and that's what Picasso meant by 'stealing'.

Great artists steal.

Whether it is a new web-site/application or a mobile application, the interactive album and the question we ask: "List a few sites that you find compelling and why?" form the sense experience on which to base the first level of abstraction. If we were to stop (we don't and you should not) at this first level then we would have copied, and that is not being great.

One problem however with the second or higher levels (as seen in Inception’s dream within a dream) is that there are apparently no laws and the higher you go in the mental creative process levels then the less your constraints become. Now this may seem a good thing, but it is not. The issue here is that as humans we live in a world governed by physical laws, society and culture and as such any product that deviates widely from these laws is seen as weird. So perhaps the most important quality of the good artist that wants to become great is to know when to stop.

]]>Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:16:15 +0100We have been using nibbler as part of our web development work-flow since 2009. You can call it the quality control agency for websites.

nibbler tests websites against the established standard benchmarks for:

Accessibility (How accessible the website is to mobile and disabled users)

User Experience (How satisfying the website is likely to be for users)

Marketing (How well marketed, and popular the website is)

Technology (How well designed and built the website is)
In fewer words,

With a single click you get a detailed analysis and score card for a website based on the benchmarks listed above. It doesn't stop there, with the test results for a particular website, nibbler makes recommendations from the technical perspective (w3c, search engine optimisation, meta data) and user experience angle (visual interest, social media, use of images, etc) on how the website could be improved.

Since it's launch over 50,000 unique websites have been tested, automatically nibbler maintains a 'top 100 websites' chart from the pool of tested websites. The challenge for any self-respecting web development company is to have their projects break into that top 100 list of websites from around the globe.

Last year we kept pushing our flagship website content management system, Web Crafter, to ensure that all the modules consistently worked together to produce an 'up to standard website' on each web project. So there was great rejoicing in-house when at launch, in 2010, the Lagos Business School website made the top 100 list.

We have never looked back and since then Web Crafter has pushed two major updates since 2010.

With the recent re-design of our website we wanted to achieve a better user experience while getting our hands dirty with a series of new web technologies especially CSS 3.0 and jQuery, so it's with great pleasure that we announce that Digital Craft Studios has also claimed a place in the top 100 websites chart on nibbler . Get a taste of your website today, nibble it with nibbler.

]]>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 09:29:09 +0100Yesterday, I was at DevFest Lagos, an event organized by Google.
And Nigeria's best mappers, geeks and map enthusiasts were there. Well,
I'm not here to talk about maps but something rather unrelated. During
one of the sessions, Aneto Okonkwo, one of the Google speakers talked briefly about using css sprites to reduce HTTP requests (which
means a round-trip) to the server and a guy raised his hand and asked
how css sprites work. So, i decided to write about it. There are
other ways of reducing the number of HTTP requests (see here)
but I'll be talking about sprites. I'll go through the advantages of
using sprites as well as how to use sprites in web design.

What is a sprite?

No,
it's not a soft drink. A css sprite is simply an image which consists
of several smaller images. The images will have the same source i.e. “background: #000000 url(source.jpg)” but different background-position values.

How does it work?

You can combine different images with a graphic software like Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks.

Then, you'll use css background positioning to select individual images from the sprite, like this:

..and probably another image for the “active” state.
If you're using a sprite, you don't need to use separate images. Just
stack the images above each other in one file, and change the vertical
placement with “background-position”. So it becomes something like this;

One of the
advantages of using sprites for roll-over states is that the images is
already preloaded, so when you mouse-over, the images doesn't flicker or
blink before displaying the image for the hover state.

Why should i use sprites?

In these parts of the world, the internet speeds is uhhm… what's the word again? Crappy (We're still expecting Glo 1).
So, you should always ensure that you do your best to reduce the time
it takes for a visitor to load your site. Reducing the number of HTTP
requests is one of the things you can do to save time. Web browsers only
do a few HTTP requests in parallel, so using css sprites you can reduce
the number of requests. Apart from reducing the number of HTTP
requests, the file size is also reduced.

Most of the
end-user response time is tied up in downloading all the components in
the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Reducing the number
of components in turn reduces the number of HTTP requests required to
render the page. This is the key to faster pages. http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

A
lot more other people and companies also use the sprite techniques..
especially when dealing with a lot of images. Remember, there are more
advanced techniques. This was just an introduction. Please don't forget
to share with your friends.

]]>Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:02:20 +0100Google announced on Monday, December 15, that its much hyped Friend
Connect service is now available for site integration, after months of
its first announcement. Basically the service lets webmasters add
social features and gadgets, such as Facebook's wall gadget, a comment
gadget, friend invites and a rating system. The most interesting part is
that visitors to your site can partake in your micro community by
logging into the service with any Google, Yahoo, AIM, OpenID
information.

This effort is impressive given the fact that people
have had to create a new user account whenever they wanted to join a
social network. More interesting is the fact that you can also publish
or export data to your, for example, Facebook profile or status message
so that your friends know what you are doing at any time.

The
launch is coming almost six months after Google first announced the
efforts, users who couldn't wait have been able to try the preview
version for some months now. The delay was mainly due to the difficulty
in porting data between the different social networks that Friends
Connect would support.

Setting up Friends connect on the dcs blog took less than ten minutes and required no programming know how. Once
I had it up on the blog, the service already detected my Gmail account
session and logged me in, and I could immediately invite friends from my
Gmail contact list, post my status update on Facebook. It's really a
mind blower. With this service users can now, more than ever, interact
with dcs site content and with other members of the dcs site community. Wow!

Google is trying to sign up with more social sites, so that
more of your friends can connect and share data right from your site and
in your site. Already sharing extends to MySpace, Facebook, Delicio.us,
Digg, Orkut, LinkedIn. What better time to stay in touch with family
and friends than Christmas, try it out, blog side.

]]>Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:49:00 +0100Good browsers on the small screen are difficult to find. The reason are
plethora, fortunately the thought of capturing the entire mobile browser
market is driving the players to innovative solutions.

One major
difficulty to reproducing the same experience that users find on the
desktops/laptops on the mobile platform is specific programmability
required for such devices because of their technological architecture
and size.

The screen is so small. This has been a major
issue to solve, some company have decided to solve it in the most
logical way, phew!, to increase the screen size by projecting the
display onto a larger surface, that too has its problems.

For
many practical people, the safari browser on the iphone was the first
real mobile browsing experience and the other players in the browser
business couldn't help following suit.

In November 2008, Mozilla launched an "alpha" version of a scaled-down, sped-up version of Firefox, called Fennec. Fennec became consumer ready at the beginning of January 2009 and so
far the reports suggest that a worthy competitor had just entered the
field.

Major improvements in processing of javascript, the power
behind responsive applications (ajax), and flash effects, also
incorporated is the Firefox famous Awesome Bar- the intuitive address
bar that guesses which page a user wants as they type a letter or two,
based on frequently visited pages and their bookmarks.

In the
screen size arena, Fennec spots a rather innovative approach to make
maximum use of the screen area. By removing all user interface controls
such Tool bars, address bar and bookmarks, until you need them. By
using a touch-screen interface design, as a user drags a finger to the
right the open tabs are revealed, a drag to the left removes the tabs
and shows the controls such as the back button and the address bar.
Double-clicking a page element zooms in on it.

With its
innovative features fennec may have just initiated another version of
the browser wars, but this time the battle field is the mobile platform.